This device could save millions of lives

Multitasking has the potential to save
millions of lives in the developing
world. That is the idea behind
SafeSIPP, a water transportation and
purification system developed by a
group of engineering students at
Arizona State University in Tempe.
Contaminated drinking water remains
a critical public health problem in
large swaths of Africa. Unsafe
drinking water contributes to 88
percent of cases of diarrhea
worldwide. Diarrheal disease is the
second leading contributor to global
disease burden and kills more than 2
million children a year. “The statistics
are staggering,” says Jared Schoepf,
co-founder of SafeSIPP and a Ph.D.
student in chemical engineering at
the Ira A. Fulton School of
Engineering at ASU. “More than 3,000
children die each day in developing
countries because they don’t have
access to clean, safe-to-consume
water.” (In the photo at right is the
SafeSIPP team from left, Lindsay
Fleming, Schoepf and Taylor Barker.)
And that isn’t the only cost, Schoepf
says. Women and children have to
haul buckets and jerry cans of water
balanced atop their heads, often
walking a mile or more. When a girl
gets old enough to carry 40 pounds of
water, “she will spend her time
collecting water every day, instead of
where her time should be spent — in
school.” People in Africa spend 40
billion hours every year walking for
water, according to the group
Charity:Water. The SafeSIPP, which
stands for "sustainable innovative
portable purification," is designed to
solve both problems. A handle on a
heavy-duty plastic barrel allows a
person to easily transport 30 gallons
of water, cutting the amount of time
spent hauling water by 75 percent.
More importantly, a patent-pending
filtration system cleans the water as
it’s rolled back home. “The water is
safe to drink,” Schoepf says. The top-
secret element in the technology —
until the patent is approved, anyway
— is filtering the water on the cheap.
Water filtration systems used for
backpacking, for example, can cost
$80 to $100. “We found cost-effective
ways to purify the water,” Schoepf
says. SafeSIPP and the nonprofit My
Arms Wide Open are expected to
conduct a pilot program in South
Africa this fall. SafeSIPP will begin
sales to development groups in
January 2014. SafeSIPP is a top five
finalist in the College Entrepreneur of
the Year competition run by
Entrepreneur Magazine.